Re: Cocoa et al as HCI usability problem
Re: Cocoa et al as HCI usability problem
- Subject: Re: Cocoa et al as HCI usability problem
- From: Michael Vannorsdel <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 18 May 2008 20:08:29 -0600
On May 18, 2008, at 7:39 PM, Julius Guzy wrote:
So I wouldn't have much to say about it except that it does have a
tendency to make things seem more exciting than they actually are.
For instance I can refer here to the idea of dynamic typing which
still requires us to have the header files present in the calling
file which isn't exactly in the enthusiastic spirit of how it's
talked about.
Indeed many of my problems with dynamic typing came about because I
took the enthusism at face value.
The header issue was just the compiler getting confused. It would
happen with most frameworks and C based languages. ObjC objects can
do all kinds of magical things like class posing, dynamic methods,
ect. But the compiler needs basic information so it knows how to pass
args and whatnot. Cocoa or ObjC can't fix this. You can message an
object without having any info about the method, but you have to be
sure the compiler will put the args where the method will expect
them. And to do that it needs to know the arg types.
Well I do do a lot of jumping right in. Always done it.
Normally I find it the quickest way of becoming familiar with the
language of the particular tribe i getting to know.
After that of course I set myself a small problem, e.g. open a
window, write hello world, open another window, draw something etc.
That for me is a natural way of proceeding. The real difficulties
have come about because of the need for precise answers to
relatively simple questions. What was one of these that took up a
fair bit of my time once....
Ask away here, that's what the list is for. I don't think anyone here
can claim they've never asked a stupid programming question before.
Everyone at one time or another has a bad day when they forget how to
do something simple and can't remember where they saw the docs
covering it. Hopefully you won't get rude people responding with RTFM
and such.
Well this is exactly how things seem to pan out. Those who have been
doing this for some time like the documentation they have. No doubt
once I become a bit more adept I will too. But right now......
My best advice is to keep working at it, trying out classes just to
learn how to make them work (and how to make them not work). Browse
the class listing and the methods in each class, often times you'll
find a method you never knew about and could really use. Soon things
will click and you'll wonder why it was so hard just a week before.
Kind of like those posters with all the weird patterns on them that
you stare at for hours until finally the 3D shapes pop out and you see
them. After that you can see them every time and wonder why it was so
hard the first time.
Keep making prototype programs like the dynamic typing one and try out
new things, and feel free to ask "simple" questions here. I often
times will make prototype programs and keep them. When I forget how I
got something to work I just look through my prototypes to remind me
and to grab code from.
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